Shopper\'s Gazes PDF

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Shopper's Gaze...

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Shopper’s Gaze ads are ubiquitous, there is increased competition among jaded consumers, desire is constructed, we all live in a abstracted future world (Images: cigarettes imagined as Torches of Freedom) (Image: of Dorothy’s ruby slippers, movie still from Wizard of OZ) Edward L. Bernays ● Credited w. inventing the term “public relations’ ● Sold the concept of cigaret smoking to women in the late 1920’s as: modern, independent, emancipated, empowered. ● He turned the social taboo of public smoking by women to a “torch of freedom”. “The credit of the sale belongs to the window”, is a quote from Frank Baum author of The Wonderful World of Oz which is said to be a fable about advertising and display.

Commodification: According to Karl Marx, commodification is the process by which a material object is turned into a marketable good with an exchange value. Commodity Fetishism: The process by which commodities become charged with abstract meaning (usually through advertising). Commodity fetishism also refers to the process by which special life powers are attributed to commodities. ex. How the lion in the wizard of oz only felt courageous after receiving the “badge of courage”, even though he was courageous all along. Commodity Self: According to Stuart Ewen, this term refers to how we construct our identities through our choices in consumer products. ex. The scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz chose a diploma (Images: stills from The Wizard of Oz, diploma for Scarecrow, heart shaped clock for Tin Man and badge of courage for Cowardly Lion) (Image: Eugene Atget, Boulevard de Strasbourg, a 1912) The flaneur as described by Walter Benjamin, refers to the mobilized gaze of the pedestrian. He is talking about specifically walking through a city, having everything available to you, and choosing a specific store to shop at. The pedestrian has the luxury of that choice. The contemporary version of such a mobilized (or shopper’s gaze) would be attributed to the modern flaneuse: the female shopper who is now the key

target of most consumer address.

John Berger (writer, critic, artist) Ways of Seeing - BBC series and text 1972 - Questioned the hidden meanings in images. - He suggested that advertisements continually describe the future. (Images: Diesel Jean, Puma and Hermes advertisements) Metacommunication: refers to any dialogue within a cultural product in which the exchange between producer and consumer IS the central topic. ex. Puma clothing tag. A ‘Meta’ Level: is a reflexive level of communicating. In advertising, this is apparent in any ad in which the central topic is the viewer’s act of viewing the cultural product. An ad that addresses a viewer about the ways the viewer is looking at the ad is engaging in metacommunication.

Hyperrealism: is a term coined by Jean Baudrillard that refers to a world in which codes of reality are used to simulate reality in cases where there is no referent in the real world. Appellation: is the process in advertising by which an ad speaks directly to the viewer/consumer. Mentioning words such as you. Another postmodern advertising strategy is the known as the anti-ad. In these ads the product in not shown and the primary intent is only to communicate hipness and knowing. (Images: Moschino ad)

Interpellation: Louis Althusser describes the process by which ideological systems call out to social subjects and tell them their place in the system. In popular culture, interpellation refers to the ways that cultural products address their consumers and recruit them into a particular ideological position.

ex. in the diesel ad, they are targeting young

people against anti-fur to buy their clothing, trying to recruit new consumers. Also trying to recruit fur wearers to buy jean clothing, or that the diesel jean clothing will free you.

The Spectator-Shopper: At the end of the 20th century the shopping mall, the Cineplex and the Museum converge to resemble the architectural arrangements of early store windows. Andy Warhol worked as a window dresser/ designer before he became an artist. Throughout his career, he drew inspiration from commercial product design and product display. “Lock up a department store today, open the door after a hundred years and you will have a Museum of Modern Art.”-Andy Warhol (1985). “Perhaps the beginning of the twenty-first century will be remembered as the point where the urban could no longer be understood without shopping.” -Architect Rem Koolhas Stuart Hall suggests that viewers can take different positions: - dominant-hegemonic reading, unquestioning (not questioning that we are bombarded with advertisements) - negotiated reading, interpretation (negotiating where to shop, when to shop, and how to shop) - oppositional reading, disagree/reject (simply stop shopping)...